Hoping to inspire and encourage those interested in drawing or painting to have-a-go.

Saturday, 8 February 2014

Rose

A few weeks ago I decided to paint a flower. I thought it would be a 'start today - finish tomorrow' sort of painting, but boy, was I wrong. First of all I didn't have as much time as I'd planned and had to work in many short sessions as opportunities presented themselves. I don't like working like that, especially with watercolours. Secondly, and more importantly, I found it much harder than I'd expected and just couldn't get the colours blending together the way I wanted them. I found some of my glazes turning to mud and it took me a while to realise it was whenever I used Alizaron Crimson as part of the mix. I suppose all of you experts out there already knew this, but I didn't. Several times I 'lifted off' the muddy area's and tried again. I finally achieved a result I could settle with and so I'm calling it 'finished'.

But I think I've made a very bad mistake with regards to composition. To give the flower bloom a grounding I invented some foliage but I'm not at all happy with the way it looks. It's too contrived and I now think a single stem with just 3 or 4 leaves would have been better. Anyway, it's all about 'learning' and I certainly learned a lot doing this one.

On a positive note, it's not that long ago I'd have attempted something like this using single washes and going wet-in-wet, which is not something I'm good at. I feel that by using many layers I've achieved a much greater depth to the painting. It may be a more time consuming and fiddly process, but it pays dividends with something like this.

You're not wrong Frank but many years ago my mother used to do Flower Arranging and one of her favourite things was a single Rose bloom surrounded by a selection of foliage. I think that's what was in my mind when I did this. But, as I said in my post, it hasn't worked as I'd hoped. Thanks for the comment.

A beautyful rose John. About colours: I have started to paint mostly with primary colours to avoid getting muddy colours and to learn more about the mixing, plus some other favourite colours of mine that I can´t do without. Some colours I use very very little of, but I still need them sometimes; as Viridian green. I use Viridian only as shadow on top of red. It doesn´t get muddy. Oh, I should do a post about colours. I´m not an expert about it, but I can atleast tell about what I have found out during my own painting. Anyway John: I think your rose looks great, perfect values and all. How are you coping with the bad weather in england? Hope you don´t have that much of a problem! Take care now and see you soon!

That's a great idea to paint mostly with primary colours Catharina - I'll have to try that. Thank you for the lovely comment about my Rose. As for the weather, I am fortunate to live in a mild area on highish ground, so I'm coping just fine, but it's dreadful for thousands of others. We had 5-months rain in 19 days and I feel so sorry for those less fortunate than me.Take care. ;-)

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About Me

I am just an ordinary, happily married, working guy. A few years ago, in my mid-fifties, I was given a book about watercolours for beginners and a basic set of paints. And so it began. Wanting to get some feedback on my paintings I turned to the internet and then, finding little suitable for the beginner, I started my own site. Art, painting, site design, html, php, css ... one way or another it's been a fabulous learning curve and several years later I still consider myself a raw beginner.